An artist who grew up in the Rhymney Valley is exhibiting a retrospective of his work at David’s Hall in Cardiff.
Titled ‘A Welsh Journey’, the exhibition by John Uzzell Edwards follows the development of his unique style of painting. Dubbed by John ‘pure painting’, it is inspired by centuries of Welsh and Celtic culture and art, including quilts, Celtic crosses and monuments, warriors on mediaeval tiles and lettering from holy books and old manuscripts like the Black Book of Carmarthen.
A Welsh Journey starts with Bailey Street, Deri, one of his earliest sketches drawn in 1964 and inspired by his childhood home in the Rhymney Valley.
The highlights of the show includes ‘Miners’, one of his earlier large-scale paintings of a group of young mining boys with their legs foreshortened, and comes from a time when John took inspiration from old photographs of groups of miners, wedding guests, choirs, workers and carnivals.
Originally sold to a private buyer in 1963, it has been loaned back to the artist for the first time to be shown at St David’s Hall. Several paintings from this period, such as Her Day, which focuses on a bride’s wedding day and Choir Lady, whose subject is a chapel singer, are featured in the exhibition.
Another centrepiece is Crazy II from his more recent works based on Welsh quilts from the 1800s. A 6ft-square collage-based painting, it follows the patterns found in Welsh quilts and is part of the series which includes Crazy I, which was purchased by Manic Street Preacher Nicky Wire at John’s exhibition at Tenby Art Gallery last summer.
John explained: “Crazy’ is a quilting term – it means random shapes, scraps, like crazy paving, or the ‘crazing’ you see on a glazed pot. But I call them Crazy because I need to be allowed this craziness. When I start painting, I never try to be clever I allow the painting to tell me what it wants to be. If you try and be too clever and academic you lose the feeling.
“When I first started painting I was making these wonderful drawings and sketches of streets of terraced houses, derelict or condemned buildings, old mine workings and chapels.
“For the past two years I have been working from Welsh quilts. I was brought up using Welsh quilts and blankets and I am amazed by their aesthetic quality. Most museums keep them in dark places, but they demand to be seen, and this has given such a purpose and energy to my work.”
A Welsh Journey by John Uzzell Edwards, runs at St David’s Hall, Cardiff, until April 24.
John Uzzell Edwards – a biography
John Uzzell Edward’s Welsh journey began in Deri in the Rhymney Valley in 1939. His father worked as a miner at Ogilvy Collier but spent his spare time painting landscapes of places he had only ever seen on postcards. On leaving Bargoed Grammar School in 1958, John found work at engineering factories, but after a series of redundancies, he gathered enough money to move to Paris then Switzerland to follow his interest in painting, visiting galleries and museums.
Returning to Merthyr, following the death of his father in 1960, John was more determined than ever to make a career out of art and started sketching streets of terraced houses, derelict or condemned buildings, old mine workings and chapels. Moving to Tenby in the 1960s, he would paint skeletal barges in Burryport, seagulls washed up onto the beach or buildings with gardens zig-zagging down to the sea.
Launching his first exhibition of sketches in Tenby Harbour, John’s talent was spotted by a holidaying professor from York University, who bought all of John’s sketches for £4 each (they now sell for £4,000). He also encouraged him to apply for a Granada Arts Fellowship at the University of York and for the next couple of years John continued working on themes of pared down skeletal images. On his final day at university he met his wife Mary.
Shortly after he received the Leverhulme European Research Award and spent a year in Rome, but came up against a creative block. Returning to Tenby to live with his family in a white house on the beach, which he converted into a home, studio and gallery with the help of the Tenby boatmen, John continued his passion for painting groups, including miners, clergy, pairs and single figures. Shifting his attention to early Christian Art and Celtic monuments, John was captivated by the structure and patterns, which has lead to his current work with Welsh quilts.
His work is instinctively Welsh yet admired and shown worldwide including The National Museum of Wales, The Mall Gallery, London, the International Celtic Festival at L’Orient in Brittany, the Hay Festival, the Humphries Gallery in San Francisco and his son’s gallery in Shoreditch, London.
Two of his recent quilt paintings have been bought by Manic Street Preacher Nicky Wire and a Hollywood scriptwriter.
He now lives with his wife Mary, a poet and writer, in a three-storey Edwardian mine owner’s house Plas Coedffaldau in the village of Cwmllynfell.
His son is Charles Uzzell Edwards better-known as the London urban artist Pure Evil, who is part of the same stable as Banksy.